Creepy Crawlers

This small lizard is called a "cicak" pronounced "chi-cha".
It currently lives in my bathroom. 

I've been planning to do a post about all the animals and insects in Jogja for a while, but I was waiting until I had some good stories. Interestingly enough, I had two major incidents in one day.

To give some background, Indonesian houses are much more open than American houses. No one really uses screens on the windows and sometimes people just leave their front door wide open. This means all the bugs and animals are invited to crawl around the house.

While at first I was totally horrified by the presence of bugs everywhere, I've gradually grown more tolerant. At work if there are ants crawling on my laptop, I just brush them aside without a second thought. I've also learned to not squirm at the sight of every lizard, especially because I know they eat mosquitos.

However, as I said, I had two very unfortunate run-ins with critters this weekend. The first was after I came home from shopping at a traditional market. I was showing my friends some of the things I purchased and when opening a purse, a cockroach jumped out and began running around my room. After a few seconds of screaming and putting the bug outside, I tested to see if some of my other gifts had bugs in them. And of course, another bag had another cockroach. Totally disgusting! Cockroaches also like to climb up the shower drains into our bathrooms.

My second incident was much worse and came later that night. At dinner, our friend Bila was telling us about how sometimes lizards fall off of the walls and ceilings onto people. All of us were shocked and grossed out by this. But of course, it happened as soon as we got home. A volunteer, Courtney, opened the door to her room and a lizard landed on her back. She quickly swatted it away and screamed. I was walking in the living room and before I knew it I heard a crunch. The lizard had landed directly underneath my shoe and I killed it without even realizing. The experience was a little bit scarring.

Not a bug, but it's interesting to note that chickens walk through the office fairly regularly. 

A giant wasp in my office 

A cicak eating the rice off of the spoon at work.